Experiential learning

Experiential learning (alternatively known as activity-based learning or ABL, learning by doing or learning through play; hereinafter, the Method) is any educational method that is based on both direct experience and cognitive reflection on that experience. Those methods may include a wide range of techniques from observations, experiments, and heuristics to public service, fieldwork, community-based research, and apprenticeship, but the following consideration of what was experienced and what can be learned is the key. The Method may also be defined as learning through reflection on doing.

Practices

According to Harvard University,

ABL pedagogy aims to enrich students' academic experience and learning outcomes by connecting theory with practice, and concepts with methods, using data and insight they obtain through engagement with the larger world.

Play as experience

Learning through play. The process of acquiring knowledge, skills, or conceptual understandings through play. According to Johan Huizinga is the critical anthropological text Homo Ludens, play is “an activity which proceeds within certain limits of time and space, in a visible order, according to rules freely accepted, and outside the sphere of necessity or material utility. The play-mood is one of rapture and enthusiasm, and is sacred or festive in accordance with the occasion. A feeling of exaltation and tension accompanies the action.

Related lectures

• Introduction to Education